Apparatus for accumulating articles such as bags
AssigneeFMC Corporation
InventorsJohn S. Aterianus, Donald C. Crawford
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A bag machine and method includes a continuously driven rotary drum for making articles such as bags from a folded web of thermosealing material. A bag stripping and accumulating mechanism is driven in timed relation with the bag making drum for removing each bag from the drum and accumulating a predetermined plurality of bags in groups before depositing the groups of bags at a location such as on the pins of a wicket conveyor when the pins are stationary, or in shingled stacks on a takeaway conveyor. Several embodiments of the bag machine are disclosed.
Claims26
An article accumulating mechanism comprising means for continuously moving a row of equally spaced articles along a first predetermined path, means defining at least one rotatable article collecting drum, means defining at least one article clamping unit on said drum, drive means for rotating said drum and also for cyclically moving said drum bodily along a second predetermined path in timed relation with the movement of the articles for moving said clamping unit into several different positions along said first path to grip said spaced articles, means for actuating said clamping unit for gripping an article each time said clamping unit moves into position to grip an article from said first path and for collecting a plurality of gripped articles while said rotating drum moves through one cycle along said second path, and means for discharging the collected group of articles from said one clamping unit while moving said collecting drum along said second path.
An article accumulating mechanism comprising;
- means for continuously moving a row of equally spaced articles along a first path, means defining a rotatable article accumulating drum, means defining a plurality of article clamping units on said drum, drive means for rotating said drum and also for cyclically moving said drum bodily along a second predetermined path in timed relation with the movement of the articles for moving said clamping units into position to grip said spaced articles, means for actuating each clamping unit during each cycle for gripping and removing a plurality of articles from said first path during each cycle and for accumulating a plurality of articles in each of said clamping units, and means for discharging one full group of articles from one clamping unit during each cycle of said accumulating drum.
An article accumulating mechanism comprising;
- means for continuously moving a row of equally spaced articles along a first predetermined path, means defining a rotatable article accumulating drum, means defining a plurality of article clamping units on said drum for collecting and accumulating articles from said first path, means defining a rotatable and cyclically movable article group collecting drum for collecting the accumulated articles, means defining an article group clamping unit on said collecting drm for receiving groups of predetermined numbers of articles from said article clamping units, drive means for rotating said accumulating drum in timed relation with the movement of the articles along said first path, means for actuating each article clamping unit a plurality of times during each cycle for gripping and removing a plurality of articles from said first path during each cycle for accumulating a plurality of articles in each of said clamping units, second drive means for rotating said article group collecting drum and also for cyclically moving said drum bodily along a second predetermined path in timed relation with the movement of the articles accumulating drum for moving said group clamping unit into position to grip the accumulated group of predetermined number of articles from each article clamping unit, means for actuating said group clamping unit for gripping one group of predetermined articles per cycle from said accumulating drum and for discharging said one group per cycle from said group collecting drum.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.